Left Implosion: Has Twitter Made Democracy Impossible?

When I saw this full page ad in The New Republic when it came in the mail today, I knew the comprehensive defeat of liberal ideas was at hand. One can nit pick about the time frame but when liberals are asking themselves if something as freedom enhancing as Twitter can be the demise of democracy, their end has already arrived. They simply don't know it.

Brittle ideology is brittle but isn't it rather early to throw in the towel on democracy because of a social media network that limits any single contribution to 140 characters or less? Is the Obama post-mortem this easily scheduled and by asking a deadly, revealing question? Even if Obama squeaks out a win, the left seems spent, adrift and dissatisfied with itself. The latter is a new development.

I already wrote that Twitter effectively destroyed the Fourth Estate, regardless of how long that takes to play out. Click here to read possibly my best received blog post to date.  Recently, a reporter from a local news outlet in the Twin Cities said on Twitter that she had "never been prouder to be a member of the Fourth Estate." It was left to me to reply: "We're all members now; hate to be the one to break it to you."

Naturally, then, it is democracy that is destroyed next by Twitter after it obliterated media as we used to know it. I should have seen this coming.

Except one can only empathize so long with opposing political views in the teeth of complete chaos and incompetence by the president. By now the left and their clones in media and academe have disgraced themselves into a corner with their transparent, shameless shilling for him. Trapped, they attack the medium of their own self-exposure. They're not stupid; they're just clueless. Don't ask me what the difference is.

Yet here, however, regarding democracy they are dangerous because they are so wrong about the subject matter. How do I know when the panel hasn't happened yet? Because it takes no great imagination to suggest that the shortness of Twitter will be the focus. The shortness of Twitter is only half the story: the other half is its ability to shape to the point of killing media narratives.

Ergo liberals necessarily must equate Twitter with the end of democracy because it fatally undermines the idea of a Fourth Estate. How can democracy flourish in the face of wrong opinions and ideas? Media exist to promote one and only one: liberalism. Feel free to call it progressivism. In fact, it's rather big of the left and their media allies to allow for multi-party freely contested elections.

Conservatives will smirk at this panel and its overheated suggestion that Twitter imperils--rather than advances--democracy. They should not. One abiding thing we know about liberals is how very deeply they take themselves. It's a burden that comes with always being right.

I wouldn't mind getting to NYC and attending this panel presentation. I already dress mostly in black so that's half the battle with this crowd. I could practice walking around without an expression of astonishment at what I was hearing. Total focus on the person speaking to me to reaffirm their self-importance: that's the ticket for schmoozing this scene.

I shouldn't joke, really, because the question, even to be posed, represents a tombstone over the grave of liberal ideology. This is as it should be: it spent these last four years on its deathbed.

Let the dead bury the dead.

Before The Deluge

Mitt Romney will be our next President. The only genuine, interesting question remaining between now and the election is the margin of victory. Romney is up 7 points in Gallup's daily tracking over President Obama. The second debate confirmed to an almost equally-as-large as the first debate television audience that we are overdue adults in our government.

Picture President Obama today in New Hampshire, of all places, hawking the binder line from that second debate to his unresponsive, deflated base. The smarter ones know it's over. No less a stalwart liberal on FOX News than Bob Beckel said so today, assuming all the numbers in the most recent Gallup poll were, in fact, accurate. And he had no reason to doubt them.

Some in the media knew it was over last month. I know I did when I saw the SEPTEMBER 13th article in The National Journal by Reid Wilson. The article's title?

"What if there is an election wave?"

Yeah, what if? My own instinct at that time was confirmed by this article and Wilson was clever in laying down a marker indicating he'd thought of it long before the wave's arrival. Read his article by clicking here.

I supported Mitt Romney from the moment he got into the primaries. I've endured a fair amount of nonsense from my fellow republicans in doing so and not just the usual back and forth of preferring different candidates. I heard a great many stupid things about Romney from people who now can't wait to vote for him. That's good, I suppose. Most have said to me at one point or another lately that they had radically under-judged the man. I actually do understand how that is possible. I always felt Romney a far stronger general election candidate than primary one. But the primaries helped him as a candidate so it all worked out in an excellent way.

I've already said on Twitter to liberal Minnesota activists that if Obama is kept under 5% I think republicans keep both majorities in the legislature. I could be fantastically wrong on that score, however, and, unlike the presidential race, we'll actually have to wait until Election Day to find out.

A Romney restoration of America is coming soon. The American people have requested it.

Locally, the hapless Republican Party of Minnesota must be dealt with by activists. Mostly it needs to be trimmed, made slightly more irrelevant than it currently is and put on the shelf. Those who enabled the Ron Paul interlopers will be held to account. The builders must destroy the destroyers.

Momentum is clearly on the side of those who realize we are already in a post-party political structure and need to adjust accordingly. In fact, republicans are shockingly behind. To this end I have a few ideas and projects that I'll be promoting:

• Minnesota Media Monitor: They Do It To Themselves™

This is both a short and long term project about which more later. Media have disgraced themselves beyond description this election and the fallout from that has only just begun. This inflection point, to use a hideous phrase, is a good opportunity to explore local media in myriad ways. News in Minnesota will never be the same.

• The Balance Project™

Minnesota republicans and conservatives will step up after the election and assist in massive programming changes at both TPT and MPR. Tax payer funded news outlets can no longer have the bias and luxury of reporting from the left of life's center line. Simply by showing up and demanding coverage of the center right we win: how can it be otherwise? But we have never done it and ceded the field to liberalism for a very long time. Breitbart always said politics was downstream from culture. Shall we help ourselves to their inner sanctum?

Balance also needs to be brought to higher education, the Humphrey School in particular. Poor academic quality wholly to one side, the lazy left/liberal tilt of its curriculum must come to an end.

Public institutions are the easiest for conservatives to approach and change. One came to me in an email today: Friends of the Hennepin County Library. Let's make sure a "range" of authors are invited to speak under its auspices. When you start thinking balance, an endless number of organizations, structures and activities can be reclaimed by the right. All things in their time.

For now though, I'll enjoy the remaining days of the campaign, watch the third and final presidential debate and look forward again to believing in America. Fortunately for liberals, they can go back to being ashamed of it.